Adaptive Compression and Shaping of Femtosecond Pulses

Linearly chirped femtosecond pulses can be compressed efficiently by grating or prism pair compressors. Combination of these compressors can be used to remove slightly more complicated spectral phase distributions. If the spectral phases cannot be approximated by the second- and third-order dispersion terms, or if the pulses are completely uncharacterized, these compressors cannot be used to accomplish efficient compression. Consequently, they cannot be used in situations where pulses undergo slow variations in time.